December 11, 2008

Fantasy Weathermen

In recent years, fantasy sports seems to have taken over the internet landscape. This trend has caused the average to sports fan to have favorite players rather than a favorite team. Ask someone who they want to win this next Sunday and his/her (mostly his) answer will be something such as, "I don't really care who wins, I just want Tony Romo, DeAngelo Williams, and the Steelers' defense to play well." This is lame. Haven't you heard that there is no "I" in team? I'm not sure how that relates, but it's a good principle to remember.

This latest trend kind of steals from the world of fantasy sports, however the final results can only be left up to mother nature rather than by screwing over your friends with unfair trades or stealing the commissioners password so you can change your lineup after the games have been played.

I hereby propose that each and every one of set up your own fantasy weather predicting league. The number of teams in your league is dependent on the number of local weather stations where you live. Here is how it works:

- Conduct a draft where each competitor picks one weatherman from the 5:00 news.

- Watch each Sunday night as your weatherman smugly tells you the five day forecast.

- Record the following predictions for each of the five days:

1) Daily high temperature

2) Daily low temperature

3) Predictions of rain, thunderstorms, overcast skies, etc.

- Make note what actually occurs during the week (weather.com statistics can be used as the standard)

Scoring will be administered using the following scoring scale:

- 3 points will be awarded to a successful prediction of rain, thunderstorms, partly cloudy, etc.

- 5 points will be awarded for each EXACT high/low temperature prediction

- 3 points will be awarded for each high/low temperature prediction that is within 1 degree of the predicted temperature

- 1 point will be awarded for each high/low temperature prediction that is within 2 degrees of the prediction temperature

(There is a 1.5 multiplyer for correct Friday predictions due to added difficulty of predicting 5 days in advance)

- Monday's barometric pressure predictions will be used as a tiebreaker

Sign that this trend has caught on: Fantasy weather leagues with your works friends